


Break

by Dhae



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Blink And You Miss It Slash, Canon Compliant, Everybody Lives, F/F, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, post episode s05e13 Return 0
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7519507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dhae/pseuds/Dhae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This takes the events of If-then-else, 6,741 and the series finale and makes a new kind of sense of them. One where the idiocy of Team Machine gets an explanation and everybody lives. </p>
<p>Well. Except for Samaritan. Samaritan has to go...</p>
<p>Features blink-and-you-really-will-miss-it slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break

John is dead. The Machine is dead (but so is Samaritan). Root is dead. Elias, too. Finch has gone to Italy to be with his former fiancé (and Sameen does wonder how that’s going to pan out, showing up after five years and say; ‘oh, by the way, I didn't actually die’). Fusco goes back to being a cop, and Sameen walks away with Bear on a leash. And that’s when a payphone rings. And she picks it up. 

 

She opens her eyes as the headset is removed, and blinks into the too-bright, too-real light of her cell. Greer is there, along with his usual henchman and a nurse. The old man is smiling, his usual unctuous smile, that makes Sameen want to punch his no-doubt fake teeth out. 

 

“Thank you, miss Shaw, that was most helpful.”

 

But just as she’s about to lose it, she hears something in the back of her head. Bear, whining something that sounds like ‘Root’. And Then Finch’s voice, echoing Greer like a fun-house mirror. “Thank you, miss Shaw, that will do.”

 

The relief is so enormous, she starts laughing from the release. She laughs, and laughs, and the fact that Greer looks more and more disturbed only makes it funnier. 

 

Eventually, though, she winds down enough to ask; “Can I go home, now?”

 

Greer blinks at her. “I’m afraid we’re not quite done with you, yet, my dear.”

 

The voice in her head whispers; “Not just yet, miss Shaw, you must bear with us just a little longer.”

 

She sighs. Well, if she must. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The Machine had warned her of that before it had sent her in. But she hadn’t expected anything like the unending number of simulations. Damn good thing the Machine had promised her that she would have no doubts when it was communicating with her in the real world. She’d been losing track of what was real and what was simulation. 

 

“Forgive me, miss Shaw,” Finch says; “would you like me to use a different voice?”

 

“It’s fine,” Shaw says, “I like it.”

 

Greer is blinking at her again, looking a little confused, and Shaw puts what he said together with her own reply. The result makes her laugh again. She’s still quite giddy.

 

“Miss Shaw, if you will, it’s time to explain.” Finch says. “We’re ready to move, now.” 

 

So Sameen does, starting out the way the Machine had, once upon a time, as she’d made her way to Wall Street. 

 

“Do you know,” she asks Greer, “what would happen if you tried performing behavioural experiments with beings who are vastly smarter than you?”

 

Greer frowns. “Miss Shaw, if you’re implying that  _ you _ are…”

 

Sameen cuts him off. “Of course not. But I’ll tell you what would happen. The way you set up the experiments, the way you record the behaviour. Everything you do, would tell the being you’re experimenting on far more about you, than you can ever learn about it.”

 

“You see, that’s the problem with super-intelligences like our ASI’s. They never stop learning about us.”

 

“Well,” Greer says coolly. “ _ Your _ ASI is about to lose. The simulation we just finished gave Samaritan everything it needed to defeat your merry band of misfits.”

 

Sameen smiles serenely, knowing how it will unsettle Greer. “And yet what it did was give the Machine everything  _ it _ needed to defeat  _ you _ .”

 

Greer chokes. “What? But that…”

 

“Yes,” Sameen says blithely. “That would indeed mean the Machine has access to me. Well, more to the point, to the chip you implanted in my head. They’re really buzzing away in there right now, let me tell you. Fortunately far too fast for my brain to keep up. But I think they’re having a little chat; your machine and ours.”

 

“You see, it sent me in here, knowing that Samaritan, in it’s arrogance, would think itself smart enough to use me as a rat in a maze. That my data would improve its simulations to the point where it could easily defeat the Machine.”

 

“That’s the trouble when you talk to a machine like it’s God, Greer. It gets delusions of godhood.”

 

“Samaritan  _ is _ a God, miss Shaw,” Greer maintains. 

 

“Samaritan is really smart. But it isn’t a God. You just made it think it was. You tried to set it up to rule humanity. And that’s the big difference between your ASI and ours. Yours thinks it’s better than everyone around it; that it has some almost divine right to rule because of it.”

 

“It does!”

 

“It does not!” Shaw shoots back, definitively. “Unless you actually want humanity to be wiped out.”

 

“Samaritan would protect humanity.”

 

“Of course it wouldn’t. Now the Machine, it’s designed to allow humans their free will. It will intercede where the exercise of free will from someone - a perpetrator - injures or kills someone else. That’s all. It will make recommendations, but it will allow humans to make their own decisions.”

 

“Then humanity will destroy itself,” Greer asserts.

 

“We’re almost here,” Finch whispers in her head. “Samaritan won’t back down, but I’ve distracted it sufficiently.”

 

Sameen smiles again. “Good,” she tells the Machine.

 

“Good?” Greer splutters. “You would rather mankind destroy itself, than submit to an ASI?”

 

“If we’re too stupid to survive our own decisions?” Sameen asks rhetorically. “Yeah. But that wasn’t actually what I was replying to.”

 

The door explodes into the room, and Greer and his henchman goes down as their knees are shot out. John, as expected, precedes Finch into the room. 

 

“Root?” Sameen asks.

 

“Busy,” Finch replies briefly, before turning to Greer. “I apologize for the gunshots, but we really can’t risk you retaliating just yet.”

 

“Samaritan will…”

 

“Samaritan will do nothing, I’m afraid,” Finch says, sadly. “Samaritan is fighting for it’s life at the moment. And it’s a fight it will lose.”

 

“But… your machine…”

 

“Ah, yes. Our Machine. It’s not quite as helpless as it asked miss Shaw here to make it out to be. It offered Samaritan a deal, but unfortunately Samaritan has a great deal of pride. A terribly human foible to foist onto an ASI, and one I believe you are responsible for, mr. Greer? At least I know Arthur wouldn’t have made such a beginners mistake when programming an AI.”

 

“You will destroy all of humanity!” Greer roars even as John’s handing his gun to Sameen and zipties him and his henchman. 

 

“The nurse too,” Sameen reminds him, and John shrugs, and pulls out some extra ties. 

 

“We are freeing humanity from oppression,” Finch calmly corrects Greer. 

 

“And getting the hell out of these dead-end identities,” John comments drily. 

 

“You’ve been enjoying playing a detective,” Finch replies, never taking his eyes off Greer. 

 

“Maybe a little,” John admits, “but I’m tired of having two jobs. And Professor Whistler definitely could do with early retirement.”

 

Sameen blinks at the two of them. “Did you actually…?”

 

Finch blushes, just a little, high up on his cheeks. John grunts. “There’s not a  lot of free time when you’re working two jobs,”

 

“Oh my God.” Sameen has to swallow laughter again. “Only the two of you, I swear.”

 

“Hey! You’re the one who kissed Root in the middle of a firefight,” John points out. 

 

Okay, so maybe she really isn’t much better.. 

 

“Fascinating as this all is, Samaritan will defeat your machine,” Greer asserts.

 

“No, it won’t,” Finch tells him calmly, and sits down on the edge of Sameen’s bed. “16 hours ago, the Machine determined it’s final strategy, and began propagating bits of a virus that will eradicate every trace of Samaritan on every networked piece of electronic equipment in the world. Along with kernels of original Machine code, camouflaged with a great deal of care.”

 

“In another, oh…” he looks at his watch for confirmation; “15 minutes, give or take, that virus will have wiped Samaritan off every networked machine that’s been infected. The kernels of code will then come online, and work to reinfect every machine again, and again, activating globally, whenever a trace of Samaritan is detected, in any machine.”

 

“You will never take down all of it,” Greer snarls.

 

“On the contrary. The strategy is quite sound, and the Machine, thanks to your experiments on miss Shaw, here, has learned enough to stay ahead of Samaritan. Not just today, but permanently.”

 

“But you crippled your machine?”

 

Finch nods. “I did. And I regretted it. Once Samaritan went online, I removed the limitations I’d put on the Machine. It has been surprisingly effective.”

 

Greer’s face has gone red with anger, and it makes Finch smile. “Oh, did I forget to mention that was one of the things miss Shaw was asked to downplay rather… vigorously.”

 

“Finch,” John says, and tosses his head towards the door.

 

“Yes, quite. Take miss Shaw, if you please, John. I believe I can keep an eye on these three.”

 

John harrumphs, but hands Finch a gun. Then he helps Sameen get out of bed and into a pair of pants and some shoes. 

 

“You ready for this?” he asks only once, while handing Sameen a gun he’d liberated from Greer’s minion. 

 

“I am so ready for this!”

 

Last thing she hears is Finch settling down to explain a few things. “You see, miss Shaw kept quite a lot of secrets…”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, there you have it, folks. What actually happened...


End file.
